Sunday, February 27, 2011

Umm, who's thwarting democracy again?

I find it interesting that people are yelling and screaming that the governor of Wisconsin is trying to usurp democracy when, in fact, the exact opposite is true.
While I may not like Republican policies, Gov. Scott Walker won the election, fair and square. This gives him the right to implement new policies based on what he told voters he would do. Thwarting his agenda stands in the face of democracy. It steals the rights away from the majority of people who voted for him. It is tyranny of the minority against the majority.
But this is bigger than just a protest rally or some minor tweaks to a health care copay. It's about what is going on everywhere. Simply put, government is too big and since the majority of governmental costs are employees, adjustments need to be made. Collective bargaining by government unions is bankrupting our communities and states. It's keeping reforms from being implemented, reforms that private sector workers have to live with every single day. Enough already.
For an alternative view to the situation in Wisconsin, check out this column by John Fund in the WSJ this week: ["Wisconsin's Newest Progressive"].
The state, like a lot of states, is facing a $3.6B deficit. In order to fill in the hole, changes need to be made on the way the state does its business. Again, all the private sector workers in Wisconsin (and other states), you know, the folks who foot most of the bill, face the same economic situation every day as the unions are faced with today. The differences? Well, first, we don't have time to just skip out on work to protest. If we don't show up for work we don't get paid. Second, if a company doesn't have as much profit as it did the previous year, employee health costs go up. And we have no choice but to accept the change. We have to live with it. Well, it's kinda time the governmental unions in this country had to deal with it too. If they don't, they will face massive layoffs and it will harm their workers and the state in the end.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

The Fairness Doctrine show now on video-cam

The Fairness Doctrine - left, right and uncensored hosted by Chuck Morse and Patrick O'Heffernan NOW LIVE on video-cam Mon-Fri 1-3pm ET.
Log on to: www.cyberstationusa.com Mon-Fri 1-3pm, listen, view, join.

Boston based Cameo Entertainment Group and WorldVuer, Inc., a Utah headquartered technology company announced today the official launch of Cameo’s upgraded CyberStationUSA.com media portal, the world’s largest privately owned online radio station and fully integrated All-In-One video interactive Social Media portal.
Cameo Entertainment Group has fully integrated the WorldVuer video technology and suite of tools throughout its primary broadcast platform, CyberStationUSA.com, which is home to some of the biggest names in the radio broadcast industry including: Mike Siegel; Don Ecker of Dark Matters Radio; Peter Anthony Holder of The Stuph File Program; Emmy award winning Producer & National Correspondent Jon Leiberman, formerly of America’s Most Wanted, host of True Facts; Chuck Morse & Patrick O’Heffernan of The Fairness Doctrine; Stephen Pecevich, host of Dads Diary; The Honorable Elizabeth Letchworth (former Secretary of the United States Senate); Wayne Metrano & Freddy George of On The Street; and radio Hall of Fame and Boston based legendary broadcaster Oedipus of CBS Radio & WBCN 104.1 “The Rock of Boston” renown host of The Oedipus Project; and many more (growing daily).
CyberStationUSA.com is much more than just another online radio station, buried in the clutter of cookie-cutter stations which dilute the internet landscape and terrestrial airwaves; they are a fully functional Social Media networking portal which directly challenges the appeal of current dominant social media portals such as: Facebook; MySpace; YouTube; Ustream; Skype; Twitter; LinkedIn; and Friendster.
The fully integrated video interactive WorldVuer technology and suite of tools will allow CyberStationUSA.com broadcasters, audiences, and Users alike to become more integrated with each other than ever before. Unlike Facebook, MySpace, Skype, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ustream, or YouTube, WorldVuer’s technology, via the CyberStationUSA.com platform, will seamlessly allow users to interface with one another utilizing real-time video and audio technology, while retaining all of the bells and whistles of the antiquated traditional social media giants aforementioned. There is finally one social media and entertainment website that does it all, instead of leaving consumers and companies having to manage multiple personal and professional social media accounts.
Users will be able to not only listen to top quality radio programming, at their discretion, but will also be able to video-conference in real time with the broadcasters, each other, or their friends, family, and clients. They will be able to upload their own High-Definition (non-grainy) videos instantly either via their computers or the soon to be launched Mobile phone application, listen to music, share pictures, and video message each other via “wall-posts” or email, all seamlessly while maintaining their own security protocols.
The newly integrated CyberStationUSA.com platform represents a welcome relief to the masses who have become tired of the weakly integrated tools of other media platforms. This Joint Venture between Cameo Entertainment Group and WorldVuer will allow individuals and companies alike the opportunity to utilize one platform for all of their online integrated business and social needs, saving them time, aggravation, and most importantly money.
Founded in November 2004, WorldVuer is the new standard for building Video Interactive Portals that delivers to any organization, individual or professional a more engaging online experience for their clients, consumers, friends, family and employees. WorldVuer’s purpose is to assist an individual or company, enrich and solidify their consumers’ and/or employees loyalty to their products, services, and brands. WorldVuer does this by integrating their revolutionary Video Interactive Portal product into their client’s website or web domain/address via their WorldVuer Optimized Networking (WON™) platform. In doing this, they transform a basic online business environment into a video driven interactive medium that enables their clients to receive deep, broad insights, into their employees, consumers, and clients opinions and expectations. This technology is so easy to use, even a child could utilize it.
This interaction of video communications, social networking and media, blogs, and highly sophisticated internet applications coupled with celebrity broadcasters joining the CyberStationUSA.Com broadcast family in ever increasing numbers, and the infusion of next generation video and social media technology affirms the legitimacy of online radio. Audiences and advertisers finally have a fully integrated platform which both engages and entertains; CyberStationUSA.Com is truly the new and dominant leader in the online broadcasting and social media arena, and brought straight to the public by two industry leading companies in Cameo Entertainment Group and WorldVuer, Inc. who with this partnership, signal the next social media revolution: seamless integration of video interactive communications technologies.
For additional information about Cameo Entertainment Groups’ CyberStationUSA.com or WorldVuer, Inc. please contact Cameo Entertainment Group at: 617-328-7775.

‘Mad as Hell’ in Madison

In the Public Interest By Ralph Nader

The large demonstrations at the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin are driven by a middle class awakening to the spectre of its destruction by the corporate reactionaries and their toady Governor Scott Walker.

For years the middle class has watched the plutocrats stomp on the poor while listening to the two parties regale the great middle class, but never mentioning the tens of millions of poor Americans. And for years, the middle class was shrinking due significantly to corporate globalization shipping good-paying jobs overseas to repressive dictatorships like China. It took Governor Walker’s legislative proposal to do away with most collective bargaining rights for most public employee unions to jolt people to hit the streets.

Republicans take rigged elections awash in corporatist campaign cash seriously. When they win, they aggressively move their corporate agenda, unlike the wishy-washy Democrats who flutter weakly after a victory. Republicans mean business. A ram rod wins against a straw all the time.

Governor Walker won his election, along with other Republicans in Wisconsin, on mass-media driven Tea Party rhetoric. His platform was deceitful enough to get the endorsement of the police, and firefighters unions, which the latter have now indignantly withdrawn.

These unions should have known better. The Walker Republicans were following the Reagan playbook. The air traffic controllers union endorsed Reagan in 1980. The next year he fired 12,000 of them during a labor dispute. (This made flying unnecessarily dangerous.)

Then Reagan pushed for tax cuts—primarily for the wealthy—which led to larger deficits to turn the screws on programs benefiting the people. Reagan, though years earlier opposed to corporate welfare, not only maintained these taxpayer subsidies but created a government deficit, over eight years, that was double that of all the accumulated deficits from George Washington to Jimmy Carter.

Maybe the unions that endorsed Walker will soon realize that not even being a “Reagan Democrat” will save them from being losers under the boot of the corporate supremacists.

The rumble of the people in Madison illustrates the following:

1. There is an ideological plan driving these corporatists. They create “useful crisis” and then hammer the unorganized people to benefit the wealthy classes. Governor Walker last year gave $140 million in tax breaks to corporations which produced the $137 million deficit for this fiscal year. Note this oft-repeated dynamic. President Obama caved to the Minority party Republicans in Congress last December by going along with the deficit-deepening extension of the huge dollar volume tax cuts for the rich. Now the Republicans want drastic cuts in programs that help the poor.

2. Whatever non-union or private union workers, who are giving ground or losing jobs, think of the sometimes better pay and benefits of unionized public employees, they need to close ranks without giving up their opposition to government waste. For corporate lobbyists and their corporate governments are going after all collective bargaining rights for all workers and they want to further weaken The National Labor Relations Board.

3. Whenever corporations and government want to cut workers’ incomes, the corporate tax abatements, bloated contracts, handouts and bailouts should be pulled into the public debate. What should go first?

4. For the public university students in these rallies, they might ponder their own tuition bills and high interest loans, compared to students in Western Europe, and question why they have to bear the burden of massive corporate welfare payouts—foodstamps for the rich. What should go first?

5. The bigger picture should be part of the more localized dispute. Governor Walker also wants weaker safety and environmental regulations, bargain-basement sell-outs of state public power plants and other taxpayer assets.

6. The mega-billionaire Koch brothers are in the news. They are bankrolling politicians and rump advocacy groups and funding media campaigns in Wisconsin and all over the country. Koch Industries designs and builds facilities for the natural gas industry. Neither the company nor the brothers like the publicity they deserve to get every time their role is exposed. Always put the spotlight on the backroom boys.

7. Focusing on the larger struggle between the people and the plutocracy should be part and parcel of every march, demonstration or any other kind of mass mobilization. The signs at the Madison rallies make the point, to wit—“2/3 of Wisconsin Corporations Pay No Taxes,” “Why Should Public Workers Pay For Wall Street’s Mess?”, “Corporate Greed Did the Deed.”

8. Look how little energy it took for these tens of thousands of people to sound the national alarm for hard-pressed Americans. Just showing up is democracy’s barn raiser. This should persuade people that a big start for a better America can begin with a little effort and a well-attended rally. Imagine what even more civic energy could produce!

Showing up lets people feel their potential power to subordinate corporatism to the sovereignty of the people. After all, the Constitution’s preamble begins with “We the People,” not “We the Corporations.” In fact, the founders never put the word “corporation” or “company” in our constitution which was designed for real people.

As for Governor Walker’s projected two-year $3.6 billion deficit, read what Jon Peacock of the respected nonprofit Wisconsin Budget Project writes at: http://www.wisconsinbudgetproject.org about how to handle the state budget without adopting the draconian measures now before the legislature.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

March 2011 Top 30 Noise chart

Reporting: 14 different radio stations and Internet programs

1. The Lights Out – Primetime
2. David Wax Museum – Everything is Saved
3. Faces on Film – Some Weather
4. The Cinnamon Fuzz – Cruise of the Century EP
5. St. Helena – Modern Tan
6. Streight Angular – Alright EP
7. Hallelujah the Hills – Collective Psychosis Begone
8. Hands and Knees – Wholesome
9. Kurt Von Stetten – Pyramid
10. Buffalo Tom – Skins
11. Deer Tick – The Black Dirt Sessions
12. The Hush Now – Shiver Me Starships EP
13. Jenny Dee and the Deelinquents - Keeping Time
14. Mean Creek – Hemophiliac EP
15. Passion Pit – “All These Trees”
16. Viva Viva – Viva Viva
17. Winterpills – Tuxedo of Ashes EP
18. Dirty Dishes – Dirty Dishes EP
19. The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library – Library Card
20. Pernice Brothers – Goodbye, Killer
21. The Sheila Devine – “The Innocents”
22. Spirit Kid – Spirit Kid
23. Corin Ashley & The Chocolate Olivers – The Abbey Road Session
24. Ad Frank & the Fast Easy Women – Your Secrets Are Mine Now
25. Andre Obin – Front Runner EP
26. Bell & the Bees – Meadowtapes
27. Freezepop – Imaginary Friends
28. Penis Fly Trap – Triple Suicide
29. Bearstronaut – “Moniker”
30. Taxpayer – Photo EP

Friday, February 18, 2011

Time to Topple Corporate Dictators

In the Public Interest By Ralph Nader

The 18 day non-violent Egyptian protests for freedom raise the question: is America next? Were Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine around, they would likely say “what are we waiting for?” They would be appalled by the concentration of economic and political power in such a few hands. Remember how often these two men warned about concentrated power.

Our Declaration of Independence (1776) listed grievances against King George III. A good number of them could have been made against “King” George W. Bush who not only brushed aside Congressional War-making authority under the Constitution but plunged the nation through lies into extended illegal wars which he conducted in violation of international law. Even conservative legal scholars such as Republicans Bruce Fein and former Judge Andrew Napolitano believe he and Dick Cheney still should be prosecuted for war and other related crimes. The conservative American Bar Association sent George W. Bush three “white papers” in 2005-2006 that documented his distinct violations of the Constitution he had sworn to uphold.

Here at home, the political system is a two-party dictatorship whose gerrymandering results in most electoral districts being one-party fiefdoms. The two Parties block the freedom of third parties and independent candidates to have equal access to the ballots and to the debates. Another barrier to competitive democratic elections is big money, largely commercial in source, which marinates most politicians in cowardliness and sinecurism.

Our legislative and executive branches, at the federal and state levels, can fairly be called corporate regimes. This is corporatism where government is controlled by private economic power. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called this grip “fascism” in a formal message to Congress in 1938.

Corporatism shuts out the people and opens governmental largesse paid for by taxpayers to insatiable corporations.

Notice how each decade the bailouts, subsidies, hand-outs, giveaways, and tax escapes for big business grow larger. The word “trillions” is increasingly used, as in the magnitude of the rescue by Washington of the Wall Street crooks and speculators who looted the peoples’ pensions and savings.

It is not as if these giant companies demonstrate any gratitude to the people who save them again and again. Instead, U.S. companies are fast quitting the country in which they were chartered and prospered. These corporations, which were built on the backs of American workers, are shipping millions of jobs and whole industries to repressive foreign regimes abroad, such as China.

Over 70 percent of Americans in a September 2000 Business Week poll said corporations had “too much control over their lives.” It’s gotten worse with the last decade’s corporate corruption and crime wave.

Wal-Mart imports over $20 billion a year in products from sweatshops in China. About a million Wal-Mart workers make under $10.50 per hour before deductions—many in the $8 an hour range. While Wal-Mart’s CEO makes about $11,000 a hour plus benefits and perks.

This scenario has metastasized through the economy. One in three workers in the U.S. makes Wal-Mart level wages. Fifty million people have no health insurance and every year about 45,000 die because they cannot afford diagnosis or treatment. Child poverty is climbing as household income falls. Unemployment and underemployment are near 20% levels. The federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation since 1968, would be $10.00 per hour now. Instead, it is $7.25.

Yet one percent of the richest Americans have financial wealth equivalent to the bottom ninety-five percent of the people. Corporate profits and compensation of corporate bosses are at record levels. While companies, excluding financial firms, are sitting on two trillion dollars in cash.

On February 7, President Obama showed us where the power is by walking across LaFayette Park from the White House to the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Before a large audience of CEOs, he pleaded for them to invest more in jobs in America. Imagine, CEOs of pampered, privileged mega-companies often on welfare and in trouble with the law sitting there while the President curtsied.

With Bill Clinton in the Nineties, corporate lobbies tightened their grip on our country by greasing through Congress both NAFTA and the World Trade Organization agreements that subordinated our sovereignty and workers to the global government of corporations.

All this adds to the growing sense of powerlessness by the citizenry. They experience hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and many more injuries every year in the workplace, the environment, and the marketplace. Massive budgets and technologies do not go to reduce these costly casualties, instead they go to the big business of exaggerated security threats.

While the ObamaBush deficit-financed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been destroying those nations, our public works here, such as mass transit, schools and clincs crumble for lack of repairs. Foreclosures keep rising.

The debt servitude of consumers is stripping them of control of their own money as fine print contracts, credit ratings and credit scores tighten the noose on family budgets.

Half of democracy is showing up. Too many Americans, despairingly, are not “showing up” at the polls, at rallies, marches, courtrooms or city council meetings. If “we the people” want to reassert our proper constitutional sovereignty over our country—we can start by amassing ourselves in public squares and around the giant buildings of our rulers.

In a country that has so many problems it doesn’t deserve and so many solutions that it doesn’t apply; all things are possible when people begin looking at themselves for the necessary power to produce a just society.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

So, I won five journalism awards on Saturday night ...

Here's the text from the online story on my work site about the NENPA Awards (formerly NEPA): On Feb. 12, staffers at the Belmont Citizen-Herald won five New England Newspaper & Press Association awards at the annual Better Newspaper Contest banquet.

The awards ranged from education reporting, election coverage, design and general excellence, and were divided into specific newspaper classes, based on circulation.

The Citizen-Herald received a third place prize in the General Excellence category for weekly newspapers of up to 6,000 in circulation. The staff submitted two editions of the newspaper for consideration. The judges stated: “The Belmont Citizen-Herald is full of community news. Readers come away with details of the town that are often missed by other papers. We like the ‘3 things to consider this week’ on the editorial page (you don’t need full length editorials on every topic).”

Editor Anthony Schinella and former reporter Christian Schiavone received a second place award in the Local Election Coverage category for the Citizen-Herald’s extensive reporting of Belmont’s 2010 annual town election. The judges liked the way the coverage reported on new ways technology has impacted campaigns, as well as the story on the candidate’s Facebook fans. The staff submitted six editions of the newspaper, including the extensive question and answer candidate features, which was created with the help of staffers at the Belmont Media Center.

Schinella received a third place award in Educational Reporting for his story, “Analysis: Officials using selective per pupil funding data.” The judges stated that the analysis piece was “a bit opinionated here and there, but overall a great statistical analysis.”

Schinella, along with pagination staffers for the newspaper, placed second in the Overall Design category for the newspaper’s July 1, 2010, edition which featured the “10 things to do this summer” front page. The judges said: “The paper presents an excellent 1A package. That momentum holds up inside the paper with the combination of charts and breakouts with nearly every story. On the whole, the paper presents the news in a navigable and easy-to-digest manner.”

Current reporter Patrick Ball, Schiavone, and Schinella, along with other staffers in GateHouse Media New England’s Northwest unit, received a second place award in Educational Reporting in the 6,000-plus weekly circulation category for the three-part series on the Minuteman Career & Technical High School, which was entered by the Arlington Advocate. The judges wrote: “What a truly introspective analysis of the inner workings and financial challenges of vocational schools. The writers did not get lost in the stats and charts. They told a story of the ‘alternative’ to mainstream education well, and they put a face on the reporting.”

This year’s competition drew nearly 3,000 entries. The work was produced by staff members at daily, weekly, and bi-weekly/monthly newspapers in all of New England’s six states. The entries, which were collected from September 2009 to August 2010, were evaluated by a distinguished panel of judges including journalism educators and lecturers, publishers from outside of NENPA membership, and others involved in the industry, including current and former employees at The Boston Globe, the Hartford Courant, the Houston Chronicle, the Providence Journal, the Burlington Free Press, and the Springfield Republican.

Ron Paul wins CPAC straw poll ... again

Just goes to show you that CPAC attendees, meaning conservatives, are not easy to peg when they are voting for a guy who wants to end the federal reserve, end the wars overseas, and decriminalize drugs: ["Ron Paul wins CPAC Presidential straw poll for second year in a row"].

And how about Donald Trump's speech, going off on our "free trade" system, which garnered him the loudest cheers. Didn't see it? Well, give it a watch: